People rely on Facebook reviews because of their accuracy over time. Of course, not every single review reflects perfectly the customer experience, but an aggregate review score quickly tells new customers what type of experience they can expect at your dealership.

Unfortunately, there’s no shortcut to get Facebook reviews or improving reviews and ratings overnight. If customers regularly have a subpar experience then your ratings will reflect that and the only lasting way to change ratings is to improve your customer’s experience.

For many auto dealerships, however, it’s not so much a problem of quality ratings and reviews, but rather the quantity of customers leaving them. If your dealership has less than 10 Facebook reviews it sends a bad message to potential customers. Even if your sales and service are top-notch, it takes time to build up credibility online.

This guide will walk you through a simple approach to getting your first 100 Facebook reviews. It requires you to manually send review invites and even though it is a free approach it will require an investment of time.[Read more…]

We’re all taught the importance of “Please” and “Thank you” at an early age. Since before most of us could walk and talk, our parents were helping us develop manners. I can clearly remember drilling this concept into my daughter Harper roughly 97,340,309 times between the ages of 2.5 and 5. Generally it sounded something like “What’s the magic word?”. At some point we pick it up. At 8 yrs old, Harper nails it about 75% of the time and I’m pretty good with that.

In the business world, these manners are the foundation of customer service – “Good afternoon, this is Jody at Checkered Flag Toyota, how can I help you?” – some version of this plays out thousands of times a day across the country. It’s the right thing to do and we train our teams to cover these basics from day 1.

From our customer’s perspective – this is the cost of entry. People want to feel acknowledged, appreciated and respected. However – the “Thank you” game is changing with the advent of increased online retail activity. There are measurable benefits to any local business, car dealers included, of saying thank you the right way.

We talk a lot about keyword strategies in digital marketing. In SEO specifically, we focus on ensuring that we are using the name of our business, our products and services and geographical locations we serve on our website. This is good content for the reader and for the search engines – Google and others need to know WHO you want to come to your site.

There is a new player on the SEO block for local businesses, hidden in plain site on your Google My Business page – customer reviews. Reviews aren’t just for the next prospect to get a pulse on the business or for the current customer to praise or criticise their experience – they fuel the Google local search algorithms with the information needed to properly understand your business and direct traffic. [Read more…]

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Editors

Jeff Kershner

I’m the founder of DealerRefresh. I got my start in the dealer business when I was 18. From there I've worked throughout several departments within fixed to variable ops. Whether it’s managing the desk, perfecting sales process or studying online marketing and media trends, I absolutely love this business and the challenges it brings. On top of keeping up with DealerRefresh, I consult with dealerships and key industry businesses. My passion has been and continues to be helping dealers leverage new media to sell and improve customer service.

Alex Snyder

2019 marks Alex's 30th year in the car business. In that time he has had a front-row seat for the rise of the Internet and has been working to bring the online and offline dealership experience closer. Whether you knew him from his life at Checkered Flag or his years with Dealer.com/DealerTrack/Cox Alex has remained an opinionated DealerRefresh contributor who enjoys nothing more than to poke at the unsaid truths in our industry. He also helped found FRIKINtech.